Pliny the Elder is an American style Double (Imperial) IPA commercial beer that has proven very popular amongst the homebrew community.

It all started when Vinnie Cilurzo (head brewer at Russian River Brewery in Santa Rosa, CA) first passed out handouts containing a homebrew scale recipe of Pliny the Elder at the 2004 National Homebrew Competition.

The malt bill is fairly simple and results in a slightly orange colour. Some sugar is added to produce a dryer beer which supposedly the customers of Russian River Brewery preferred. Like most IIPA's however this beer is all about the hops. Hop aroma and flavour are at a level that is hard to describe. Less bitter than you think, with a fresh hop aroma of floral, citrus, and pine.

The beer has undergone some minor tweaks over the years, so you'll see variations posted all over the internet. The recipe below is based on something close to the original, scaled for our system. Today the brewery supposedly no longer uses mash hops (most brewers believe it doesn't add much to the flavour and it's rumoured that the cows that were fed the spent grains did not like it).

Pliny the Elder was a Roman naturalist, scholar, historian, traveller, officer, and writer. Although not considered his most important work, Pliny and his contemporaries created the botanical name for hops, hence the naming for the beer. You're not likely to find a hoppier commercial beer than Pliny the Elder.

It's a definite must-brew for any hop-head. I've brewed it a few times now.

Awards:

- Gold Medal, 2006 World Beer Cup (Double IPA Category)
- Gold Medal, 2005 GABF (Double IPA Category)
- Bronze Medal, 2004 GABF (Double IPA Category)
- As of 2013, this beer has been ranked as the #1 beer in America for 5 years in a row now by the American Homebrewers Association's Zymurgy magazine.

Because of the huge hop profile, it's best consumed reasonably fresh (like all other hop forward beers). It even says so right on the outside of the label:

One thing to consider that there are 4 oz of hops in the mash, 21 oz of hops in the boil kettle and then another 16 oz for dry hopping. That's 41 oz of hops for 10 gallons of beer! Be prepared to lose a considerable amount of beer in both the boil kettle and the fermenter to hop absorption. Below are a few pictures of the boil kettle after draining. The hop material is over 2" thick in spots. The Hop Stopper had no issues filtering this extreme amount of hops:

Brew up a batch and let me know how you like it!

Ingredients are also available in kit form. Two are available: All grain or Extract.

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* For recipes that call for simple sugars like corn sugar, adding them near the end of fermentation instead of in the boil can help if you have attenuation problems. To do this, heat up some distilled water to near boiling (above 180F) and stir in about 1lb of corn sugar. Let it cool and add directly to the fermenter. Keep doing this every 2-3 days until all of the corn sugar is used up. Why does this help with attenuation? Yeast likes to eat simple sugars (like corn sugar) first before it attacks the more complex ones produced by the grain. By giving the yeast only the 'less tasty' stuff (complex sugars) first they're more likely to finish it all before moving on the 'tasty stuff' (simple sugars). Giving them both at the same time is like giving your kids dinner and desert at the same time. They'll eat desert first and then be too full to eat their dinner. Given them dinner first, and there's always room for desert.

I've got a batch of this dry hopping in the conical..is it acceptable to squeeze every last precious drop of liquid out of the hops when I remove them?_________________"You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa

What's your logic for not squeezing the hops, Kal?....is there stuff in there that we don't want that we would get if we squoze it?_________________"You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa

..and mine are all whole hops so unless I take some remedial action a significant amount of the precious stuff is going to be extracted with the hops..._________________"You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa

Squeezing would get a bunch of trub and other junk in there. You may get more vegetal matter too depending on how hard you sqeeze. I just don't think it's worth it. Best to leave behind as munch junk as possible from one racking to another (IMHO).

squeezing the hop sack can add a tannic, vegetal aroma to your beer which i dont think you want. It will also let out some of the hop particulate, which you could avoid when racking, but for me personally i want to keep that nice floral aroma and avoid vegetal aromas when dry hopping. It would be a shame to ruin a batch of beer just to gain back a pint or two. You can of course just pick the grain sack up and out of the liquid and just hold it there for a while to let it drain without squeezing, but ive never done that so i cant speak for the results._________________Holter
LABeerFan.com

Thanks for the tips guys...I definitely don't want any off flavours to be introduced. As my hops are free floating I'll just scoop them out with a slotted spoon and fine the remaining liquor for 2-3 days..hopefully that will preserve the lovely aroma and ensure a beer clear from any sediment.

..unless you can advise a better methodology?..._________________"You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa

I brewed this around 3 weeks ago. OG was slightly higher and FG ended up at 1.006, so this is going to be boozy. It fermented slightly warmer than I would have liked due to the summer heat.

Today I kegged it. I have a conical and dumped trub/yeast/hops as much as possible, but not that much came out. After filling the kegs, an inspection showed the massive amount of remaining hops were too thick to pass through the butterfly valve. In the future I will sterilize a rod to poke through in the future. After filling both kegs and opening the conical I could see the sample valve was still in very thick hop residue, so I suspect keg #2 has a bunch.

I sampled it, warm and un-carbonated. It tasted absolutely fantastic. I did have one bad thing happen that risks infection -- through a strange series of events some of the blow-off water made it all the way up the tube and some potentially made it into the beer. The blow off water is star san based but is so old I suspect it would no longer be sterile. Here's to hoping a bad infection doesn't happen. Luckily this isn't one to age.

I removed the free hops on Thursday using a large sieve..avoided the temptation to squeeze them...and then pitched 80ml of Isinglasss mixed with some of the beer..so as to clear it, if poss....still have loads of floating bits in the beer so will keg today with a muslin bag over the end of the hose from my conical..at least that should filter any stray trub and veggy matter..and then it's straight into the keezer for a couple of weeks chilling...can't wait..!!_________________"You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons but at the very least you need a beer"
- Frank Zappa

No. Efficiency is all about how well the system converts grain starches to sugars and then extracts them. Hops do not factor in at all.

Hop extraction is based on contact time in the boil. Pellets do get a bit more per weight than whole hops. I think it's about 10-20%. Some people who use hop bags get clumping which reduces hop extraction too. I use pellets mostly and all my recipes assume pellets. I just noticed I didn't mention that anywhere but I don't remember any recipe ever mentioning that. I think most people always assume pellets. Those that use whole hops may want to increase slightly though the slight increase isn't likely going to be noticed. AA% drops over time too with hops. It's all somewhat of a crapshoot. Brew it, and then make changes are required.

Brewed! Had some issues with my HLT probe - I think there might be a loose wire somewhere. The temps would look great and then all of the sudden it would shoot up. Had to MacGyver it and use the boil PID for the HLT and then switch them back for the boil. I overcompensated for the wort loss due to hops so I ended up pulling one of my Curtec 7055 55 liter fermentation barrels. Got one batch in a 6.5 gal carboy and about 8 gallons in the Curtec. Hoping that the Curtec's "smell" doesn't leach into the beer :-/

if your PID was jumping all over the place, you probably have a short in the wiring in the probe. i had that issue, replaced the probe wire and all is well since.

Silverspoons

yeah I'm going to move the same probe from the HLT and MLT kettles to see if it still jumps around - I *think* that the issue might actually be in the wiring from the pid to the "probe plug" (the real name is escaping me now) at the bottom of the enclosure.

Hopefully it's the probe wire but I'm not holding my breath - I got them from Spike. I have more confidence in his soldering ability than mine

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